Henry Molaion Case Summary

The HM case study opened many doors in the medical and scientific worlds. Henry Molaison was affected by epilepsy at a young age due to a head injury. By the time he was 16, Henry suffered from severe epilepsy causing him to have multiple seizures in a single day. By the age of 27 his epilepsy was so bad he couldn’t get a job so he went to go see Dr. William Beecher Scoville at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. From that moment, Henry Molaison agreed to take part in a highly experimental surgery that would cause him to lose his ability to form memories. Dr. Scoville performed a very technical surgery on Henry that would hopefully cure his epilepsy. Henry, not knowing the outcome of the surgery, willingly agreed to take part in this experimental procedure. Dr. Scoville performed a bilateral medial temporal lobe resection where he removed Henry’s temporal lobe, half of his hippocampus and
He couldn’t even remember certain memories from 11 years prior to the surgery. This is called Anterograde Amnesia; loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. He still retained the ability to create new motor memories. With repetition, Henry was able to learn new things even if he didn’t remember he learned it. Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist from McGill University in Montreal, assisted Dr. Scoville in studying Henry Molaison. She asked Henry to complete a star outline by drawing in the last lines multiple times a day, and even though he didn’t remember doing the test multiple times before, he showed improvement in his lines every time he completed this test. This showed that he was able to learn new things through repetition even if he couldn’t remember learning